


Just Flirting

by 11dishwashers



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: F/F, Fashion AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 17:50:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14141298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/11dishwashers/pseuds/11dishwashers
Summary: Sooyoung gets called into the office at night while Jiwoo, her romantic interest, is preoccupied with crying over printers.





	Just Flirting

Each night before it seemed time to sleep, Sooyoung found great pleasure in what had practically became the act of bathing in expensive fabrics. In the beginning extents of this obsession- such were obsessions, but extents drawn out until they grew tiresome, the love of pin pricks and the like bunched up until a lifetime of skin which couldn't regenerate soon formed a gap in the surrounding oxygen- her brother had visited on a fine July evening, when the photography students were clustered about the blossoms of the park trees just beyond the barrier between her and her ventures, and had drawn up what he'd deemed as a humorous comparison between her and Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada, to which she could only admit that the whole thing had escaped her, on account of the fact that romcoms made her want to vomit profusely and with great diligence until her toilet bowl might crack by force. At the time, he had been taken off guard by the notion that a woman who had found great success and gold clasps in the fashion industry mightn't want to waste her time with this method. 

Sooyoung didn't care if, taking into account that articles of clothing weren't a direct cause of cancer and making it the opposite, she'd develop lung scabies from her beloved Moschino new collection(and, through her glamamoured(double brackets for such a silly explanation; due to reservations surrounding functioning as an adult might, Jiwoo had developed a flame for this word and its continued use, and supposedly it might've been a play on the word 'enamoured') eyes, one of the finest works of the past few season cycles. The leather was as glorious as it was richotted with creases, but the humbleness of nineties glitz fashion had punctured every facet of the industry with tackiness and gusto. No longer were the days of faux niceties influenced by reality TV, but rather the faux ugliness brought on by thrift shopping and vintage wear). Not that she felt it was  _ necessary _ to care, really. If she spent every dime of her money on bi-monthly translated shoujo mangas- goddamnit Jiwoo, what a cruel habit to pass on- and luxury brands, it was nobody's business but her own as the breadwinner of the household of Two, Exactly. 

Thus, she laid upon the bedroom floor and made a snow angel in a pile of bubble belts, the buckles of which pierced up along her spine and the back of her shins, which were oddly pale where the skin caved in towards her knee joints in comparison to her peers. There was something utterly magical residing in the knowledge that such niceties could be attributed to her good eye and how deep she'd kicked her heel into the economy's foothold. Furthermore, there was something graceful about the weight of a pair of stilettos in the hands of herself and herself only, how light the toll of beautiful adornment might be in the short run with the right doses of stability in all the right places. Sometime in the future her feet might've become misshapen to resemble clothes hangers, sure, but for now the curved forms, silhouetted along the white hot lights of a function room might complement an outfit so well as to beckon a third force of nature to come and relax the malformed flesh stemmed down from the ankle until it could no longer be said that she'd delved into a ruin, and no longer pink through the spirals of obsession she'd lay among the belts as they whispered to her, tones indignant, hissed as the rattlesnake bit out after a decapitation of a rodent. 

It was at that moment, perhaps swooping down towards REM sleep, where her phone sounded from across the room. This arrived with the due surprise most notable in those of no social standing, for previously she hadn't received calls from anyone but her mother, and those were scheduled in between cornerblocked Hello Counselor episodes and dietitian meetings at the host's conservatory. 

Her mother, under no circumstances, had so much as given Sooyoung a second thought beyond the time often reserved for taxis with fluorescent signs, tipped into a flood when the after work traffic dissipated. Sooyoung might've felt something akin to excitement at the prospect, had she known what it felt like in the first place. However, being in a constant state of dramatic boringness, liveliness never stewed within her liver(not without lack of effort- she'd enrolled and won in a tournament of company competitive bowling, attended an influx of speed dating sessions at various cafés throughout her block, gotten a world record in a Mario Kart time trial while wasting away vacation week at her cousin's, and took out a sabbatical to tour the riverside restaurants and orange lights flitted about the cobblestone of Paris), though it occurred to her that this might be the case. 

She sighed when she saw Jiwoo's name flash across her screen- spelled wrong of course, though not by fault of Sooyoung, rather of Jiwoo's inhibitions in regards to wasting time on the little things like contact names. Sooyoung was far from hating her, yet it seemed appropriate when all the folds of her psyche were taken into account, that she might only be slightly disappointed if Jesus had called to announce her status as the new messiah. Even then, more of the excitement would root from her ability to make wine rather than anything the lord would have to say. "Jiwoo," she said, and made a conscious effort not to let her voice expose the pit of negativity deepening in her soul. Jiwoo had a round face, and it seemed that her personality was sculpted to perpetuate this truth in a perfect formation- she'd grown up jolly and never grown up at all, somehow, and despite her numerous efforts at severing her ears for others to dispense their problems upon her, divulging any information of even semi-jest was too dark a wondering for her brain, engraved with candy corn and butterflies, to partake in. The thought of telling her of Sooyoung's sadness in life was the closest thing to horrifying this side of the apartment, and perhaps even the world. Thus, Sooyoung attempted to act in a method she'd never so much as let pass her by before, and in doing so the mirror by her closet made a mockery of her by displaying the way she smiled so constipated, cheek grazing the mouthpiece. Only she saw it, but still it was enough to be ashamed. 

"Sooyoung!" Jiwoo said, haughty and a tad offbeat, as she tended to sing everything she had the inclinations to convey, even as a manner of speech rather than a downbeat vocal trapeze. "Sooyoung! Sooyoung!  _ Sooyoung _ ! Please, hurry over to the office, I  _ need _ you, and it's not every day that I need someone so badly-" Jiwoo coughed, then began hacking up half her lung down the line. Sooyoung held the phone away from her ear for fear of the organ slithering against the cartilage and contours of her profile. In any case, she supposed that she had an absolute lack of desire or, failing that, drive to attend to Jiwoo's reckless stupor at this hour of the night. Accordingly, she decided that she would not. 

"Isn't Haseul usually at the office around this time?" she asked, as if she'd know in the slightest whether Haseul was usually at the office around this time or not. However, the shoe seemed to fit; upon the uttering of the syllables, an image resounded in her mind so clear and humble that she hadn't the dignity to pan it out, of Haseul in among the claws of her absenstious office, the books sturdy and read by the ikea desk lamp, and she wouldn't move for hours from her state of the eternal workhorse. Fate was odd to some people, in that it made Haseul a boulder and Sooyoung a hoarder and Jiwoo annoying. Sooyoung pulled at her panty hose until it freed itself from her legs and weighed out the merits of a pre-bed facemask. In her  refusal of Jiwoo's extended hand, a new realm of relaxation had presented itself to her by virtue of the fact that she'd never considered a moment to be relaxing until the alternate path showed its pretty, round head. "You could go to her. I'm sure she won't mind helping. In fact, I think it sorta gets her off."

"Oh god, don't say dirty things when I'm so  _ panicked _ Sooyoungie! It makes me laugh and I can't laugh now or I might cry. Of course I checked if she was there! And she wasn't! Sooyoungie please, you're my last hope!" Jiwoo was on the verge of inciting a worried check in from the neighbours by the degree of her exclamations, and Sooyoung figured that if someone else at the office was present they'd have long since drop kicked her into silence by now. She felt something in her heart delatch and it really pissed her off that such might be the case. If it had been Heejin to call her, she'd have surpassed the physical limitations of earth and teleported over immediately as Heejin was very,  _ very _ enthralling, and vaguely popular in that cheerleader stretch of the word, but it was just fretty old Jiwoo who no doubt was killing herself over the death of a mite, or something similar in its margins. 

Sooyoung was shoving her feet into a pair of scummy converse when she told Jinwoo to hang in there, I’ll be over as quickly as the traffic lets me at this time of the night. It had surprised her at first- the notion that she might have a heart, that is, and from there on out it became a mark down in regards to how she might handle proceedings in the future, that her sleeping schedule had shed itself of reason so quickly to accommodate another idle caring. Still, she decided as she pulled the scarf free from its itching point on her neck, that she would at least hazard before choosing it any other way. To care was to delight also; in her Toyota, she sighed with some cheerful revelations of the fact that her time was occupied and not hollow, as was noteworthy. 

Jiwoo was at the foot of the building when Sooyoung had arrived. Jiwoo, short and stout in the manner of an adolescent boy, her being divided up into different sections which lended themselves to an endeavour supported by intrigue. Her eyes were red, and Sooyoung realised as soon as she met them that Jiwoo would cry again with ease- that this was inevitable, and that during the crisis she might have to lend a shoulder that could put up with damp salt again and again should the dramatics persevere. 

"Sooyoungie darling, thank you so much for coming-" Jiwoo's voice cracked midway through the melody and she tipped her head to the side so as to blow her nose without inciting the subsequent disgust. She was so beside herself that it sounded very much like a foghorn, and her napkin followed her hand with a film of silvery slime along its ruffles. Sooyoung wrinkled her nose and said nothing, for she had never thought of herself as rude enough to act upon its symptoms. In doses, she could withstand the subdued grace which Jiwoo maintained when going about her upset, and it seemed that there was no alternative unless she closed the car door and went back to her apartment, packed six suitcases of the meager, meritted wastes of her luxury brands, and left the country to pirouette through the Parisian lifestyle, such were here teenage ambitions. Paris fashion week could be every week, if one were to loop about les batiments(during her first desk job, she found great entertainment with the idea that clearing enough Duolingo levels would hard carry her brain into fluency) often enough that each anomaly would have its due inspection. When Jiwoo was done blowing her brains into a nylon handkerchief, she dispensed it in a short bin by the automatics that Sooyoung had never noticed was there before. "It's a crisis- really, a problem! A  _ huge _ problem! Oh god, I'm going to die!"

Sooyoung scoffed and wondered whatever could be enough to kill the company's immortal flower, regarded by butterflies and beheld by creepy logistics men when the protocol for a glamorous, oversized 'press conference' was  _ indeed _ necessary. "Look, if you're not going to calm down I'll just have to shut you up... I'm thinking a gag, maybe-" she paused to examine Jiwoo's response, which was oddly sizeable in its scale; the reddened face moreso by effect of statement rather than its previous sorrows, and on from that a hand patted at her hair in the span between the crown of her head and her necklace clasp(which read, cutely and glamamoured ' _ Jiwoo _ ' in gracious gold cursive), the other hand flattened across her collar, some image of an opera singer who was in the business to retain stipulations. 

"What did I say about bringing up dirty stuff?! Now is not the time!" she said, and rubbed at her arms in such a way that made Sooyoung walk through the door just to lead her out of the cold. Before, she hadn't thought that the mention of a gag was to be interpreted as strictly sexual and vaguely sinful, but the prospect of Jiwoo's kink oriented mind enticed her somewhat with how entertaining it was in actuality. To think a cockatoo such as Jiwoo would first delve to ball gags at the mention of shutting up at all, such was the amusement extracted from what was a horrible night. They went up to the third floor in silence thick as nervosa, and found that the entire sweepstake was dimmed and no desk lights were illuminated in ghost whispers along the tinted glass cubicle panelling. The whole time Sooyoung had yet to have the canopy pulled from her face, and she couldn't help but imagine a dozen scenarios in which some form of corpse was come across- first stuffed into the chest at the soles of Haseul's desk, beaten dry and purple with a tome accompanied by heavy magnitude and comeuppance. Secondly- more exciting, perhaps, more lively and interesting and punctuated by reddened confetti- was one of the logistics men spasmed to permanent exhaustion in a pool of his own filthy blood, stabbed through the face and eyes with a paper scissors by Jiwoo as too late of a revenge for being weirdos. Dressed in circumstantial mystique, she floated across the fiberboard with a grace that couldn't be a replica by memory but rather by the actors which Sooyoung had thought she might've seen on tv; these western actresses on old straptaped stories of taboo as they moved to the gold brushed cradle of a telephone. She followed, and thought to herself that all this time, Jiwoo's prettiness had gone unnoticed by her. Only at this moment, she felt she saw the rush, though it wasn't obvious why, as it seemed clear that before the burnishes of senseless, neglected beauty had existed. It was a simple case of the unnoticing and then the undoing of such wrongs. 

Heejin induced enthrall- for what? Hadn't Jiwoo all the charm in a smaller form? 

"I broke the printer dish," she sobbed as they reached the center of technological aid. Indeed, with guidance by her small hands, it could be seen that the dish wouldn't flipper shut when the button was pressed. She demonstrated once, twice, three times, all the while shivering in a miserable state- miserable to watch, too. Not that it was stabbing at Sooyoung's heart, as empathetically inclined as it had revealed itself, but rather because the way Jiwoo vibrated was odd and uniform and above all else, obnoxious. 

"Give it here," Sooyoung said, and when Jiwoo did nothing but whirr some more, Sooyoung felt it necessary to remove the plate from her hands and lay it flat along the hinges until they lined up with each and every notch. Jiwoo bit her lip whenever Sooyoung did anything, but knowing her it was probably with nervousness rather than, say, anything else which might be a tad enjoyable to some bizarre extents- it was the grace again, the display of attraction below the chisels, should it be taken in the first place. However, Sooyoung took this as another one of her lost destinations; for another lifetime, it seemed. She pressed the power button twice and then circled in on the eject clasp once. To the sole surprise of a fretter, the tray had folded back into place so smoothly it was almost a pleasurable sight. 

There was pressure along her whole side, a softness dug into her shoulder from beyond Jiwoo's plethora of hair. This was an act of tenderness as any other, and to put it simply, it was on course for her to lace friendships with all the care she could muster, an admirable trait for a mother to be sure, but Sooyoung didn't know how to feel about the swiftness of the embrace and the thick skim of the silence from who she regarded as a work colleague when the safety net so imprinted the hatches along her skimpy legs. 

Then, as if nothing had happened, "Sooyoungie- you're my saviour! Thank you so much! You really are a  _ genius _ , you know, with all these tech-y sort things, and I've always said it too!" Jiwoo ran a hand along the name brand, etched into the printer's nuzzle. The darkness sloped as a car passed by outside, an orange beam imposed on its pass through upon the opposite wall. Sooyoung pressed her lips together and put two and two together. 

"Don't worry about it," she said. "It was nothing, really."

"Ah, so cool! You're like a mysterious bad boy!"  Jiwoo took her hand and began guiding her through the office, though she'd of course known her exit strategy in the first place and the variables that went into the atmosphere; whether or not the lift was running at such a terribly, awfully late time, whether the automatics had burned out, whether the sways could take precedence over a wheel or a gear stick with such a simple rock and sway and hard place. 

There was nothing but fast food restaurants. Again with the neon signs, Sooyoung thought- cocktail bars with chrome fronts of the money laundering scheme, and then the gazette ridden cheekbones along the riverside or the strait through the park, the frills of a restaurant's dip, the waiters overcooking among touristic forty year olds learning what it meant to be in love and out of it, and perhaps not fathoming that they themselves had once existed as people without the sacrificed mould along the heart's ribbing. The most respectable place which she could come up with accompanied by a strain was drive thru McDonald's, and she found it hard not to comply despite the fact that her dress shirt was excessively nice tonight, a closet runner upcycled by the non-chained frocks parade down at the mall(one of several to have spiritual breath over one another, and a supplier of vintage outfits to replicate the style of a ghost in a school play, such was the spin of uniqueness often seeked), and she didn't want the blue to run brown with grease tomorrow. However, it was painted as necessary that Jiwoo should eat at that very  _ instant _ . In spite of this, Sooyoung couldn't help but wonder if she ate at one every night or if this was an anomaly that hadn't needed to transpire, but was doing so with smugness. 

It wouldn't change the way things happened. Jiwoo would be leaning across her to go off on a tangent about the degree to which her bacon double cheeseburger should be cooked. It was almost as if she'd expected to be asked whether she liked her patties rare of wellcooked, and furthermore that the answer would have an automatic sense of dignity, and this wasn't the case at all of course. Nevertheless, she had a chat into the speaker all pressed across Sooyoung in the driver seat. Sooyoung could feel the padding of her bra against her forearm, and wondered if Jiwoo knew what the fuck she was doing in a position that couldn't help but incite some lewd subtext, whether between dotted 'cut here' lines or otherwise. "Sorry," Jiwoo said when she leaned away, and her eyes widened for a second wherein she noticed Sooyoung go pink through her foundation that she'd paid  _ good money _ for in the hopes that it might prevent blushing. She'd grown up prone to this, and had rejoiced in pure happiness when No. 7 had saved her ass once again, back before she'd worked anywhere and back before she'd understood makeup and back before she'd gotten with her first girlfriend, and had been trying to stall with her dates for fear of what it might inevitably mean- though none of this worked, of course. Otherwise, she wouldn't be pink and just a sliver- no, really- crestfallen. "There's rumours about you," Jiwoo said, hesitating. 

Sooyoung focused on driving the car without the engines swerving through a recoil of her own transferred stress at such an open ended statement. It was with great relief that she approached the glass till, before having to respond at all with only a minor awkwardness. The cashier lady was so tall her forehead had been secluded from her frame by virtue of the cut off point, and her hair net slopped down across her eyebrows; when she chewed her gum and her mouth split ajar for just a mere moment, it could be seen that the gum was alight with her red lipstick, abhorrent and chalky and textured with playdough. 

In the parked car, rooting through brown bags damp with lard- "I've heard that the... the company you keep, is with women-"

"No," Sooyoung commenced, however ejected she might be that she couldn't finish her nuggets before the hitch, and before they might remain hot by some grander means. "No, I'm not. Who told you that? And why should you, you know, care? I'm straight but if I wasn't it wouldn't be  _ any _ of your business really. God, people can be such nosey fools- "

"Sorry," Jiwoo said, chaste and unlike herself. When a glance could be risked by hesitation’s clearance, her eyes were dim, trained on her set of rings and the new coating of chip oil that shimmered with the occasional pair of headlights that struck past. "Sorry, you're right. It's really none of my business as your coworker. But… but as a- a person who um, who likes you."

One couldn't imagine the extents of how cold the immaculate waters of the river might be pierced, by a flatbottomed shoe attached to a flatbottomed girl dipped in at the nose and submerged up to the black lace, swiped in half, or perhaps by Sooyoung's head as she dived into shallow floodlines  so her hair might whiplash across her visage split seconds before the coroner would have been broken out of paycheck unrest. Unbelievable, really; it wasn't that such news of a potential suitor with the beauty and  _ cuteness _ of Jiwoo might make her consider death, but really it was to g out on a limb and prove that this moment was real enough to end, perhaps with colossal means but perhaps with prolonged tension too. 

She had grown up lazy and empowered by the fact that she could still reap the benefits of those who deposited effort, even passion. A bad habit to break was one that rooted itself to the splits of the being, and more importantly the manner with which an individual could move on without the awareness, the dropped handkerchief playing off self worth, stained with something- fill in the blanks, dirty or depressing or grotesque or simply non existent. 

It was a given that she took the easy way out, and had leaned across the cup holders with the intent of kissing Jiwoo(so far not explicit but that may be reserved for a later date, and perhaps a different location, and perhaps when she didn't have to worry about her nuggets going cold). Jiwoo smelled like vanilla ice cream, and Sooyoung was a bit enamoured until she realised that Jiwoo had just been picking at a McFlurry and it was now propped in her lap, scent rising. 

Regardless, how sweet a kiss it was. Sooyoung kept her forehead right there against Jiwoo's when she supposed she might get on with the delicacies of barely bloomed romance- the foundational stems of a confession that speared itself out from the weight of a situation and reassured dozens around the world. "I must be dumb- I really thought you were just being overly friendly."

"No," Jiwoo laughed, eyelashes flatted down across her waterlines. If Sooyoung looked close enough, she could see the miniscule specks of mascara, waterproof as a logical precautionary measure by its master, the black sheened so finely she could've sworn Jiwoo was born with full, bambi lashes in the first place- wow, she really was getting good at this romance thing! If only vocalising it was as easy as the fantasies of vocalising it implied! "I was flirting, obviously! I don't just go on like that with anyone, Sooyoung darling."

"Darling..." Sooyoung laughed again and ran a hand through her hair, idle. "That's cute. Which makes sense, really, since it's you who said it."

**Author's Note:**

> i love these girlies  
> u can follow me on twitter @11dishwashers for more writing updates!! <33 can't wait to see what u guys think <3
> 
> edit: EGOIST IS EVERYTHING IVE EVER WANTED AND MORE


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